---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edward J. Valauskas <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 18-Jan-2006 02:12
Subject: First Monday Conference
To: [log in to unmask]


First Monday Conference
FM10 Openness: Code, science and content
15-17 May 2006, at The University of Illinois at Chicago

Celebrate ten years of First Monday!

Register at http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

Send an abstract or paper to http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

Thanks to a grant from The Open Society Institute, as many as 20
participants from developing countries may receive grants to attend
the Conference. An application form can be found at
http://firstmonday.org/fm10/FM10_OSI_fundreq.doc. Deadline 10
February 2006.

The Conference is generously sponsored by The Open Society Institute,
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The University of
Illinois at Chicago University Library and The Maastricht Economic
Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), University
of Maastricht.

About the Conference

Recent years have seen a strong interest among academics, policy
makers, activists, business and other practitioners on open
collaboration and access as a driver of creativity. In some areas,
such as free software / open source, sustainable business models have
emerged that are holding their own against more traditional,
proprietary software industries. In the sciences, the notions of open
science and open data demonstrate the strong tradition of openness in
the academic community that, despite its past successes, is
increasingly under threat. And open access journals and other open
content provide inspiring examples of collaborative creativity and
participatory access, such as Wikipedia, while still in search of
models to ensure sustainability.

There are clear links between these areas of openness: open content
often looks explicitly towards open source software for business
models, and open science provides through its history a glimpse of
the potential of openness, how it can work, as well as a warning of
the threats it may face. Finally, open collaboration is closely
linked to access to knowledge issues, enabling active participation
rather than passive consumption especially in developing countries.

Despite these clear links, there has been surprisingly little
thoughtful analysis of this convergence, or of the real value of the
common aspect of open collaboration. In particular, while open source
software - due to its strong impact on business and on bridging the
digital divide - has drawn much attention, it may provide false hopes
for the sustainability of openness in other areas of content that
need careful examination. The conference -- FM10 Openness: Code,
science and content - Making collaborative creativity sustainable --
provides a platform for such analysis and discussion, resulting in
concrete proposals for sustainable models for open collaboration in
creative domains.

The Conference will draw on the experience of First Monday as the
foremost online, peer-reviewed academic journal covering these issues
since May 1996. Not only has First Monday published numerous papers
by leading scholars on the topics of open collaboration, open access,
and open content in its various forms, it is itself an example of
open collaboration in practice: for a decade, the journal has been
published on a purely voluntary basis, with no subscription fees,
advertising, sponsorship or other revenues. The success of First
Monday is demonstrated by thousands of readers around the world,
downloading hundreds of thousands of papers each month.

For more details, contact Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor of First
Monday at [log in to unmask] We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!


--
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~sthomas/

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